Raven Meridius
Birth & History "Not many of our kind knows the truth about Raven Meridius; she's one of the purebloods blessed by the Kin-father Molag Bal. She rose to power in the days after the fall of Potema and Pelagius the Mad. She saved our clan from certain fate many times over. She's a hero to our tribe. But thats what's known. If you dig deeper and scratch the surface, you won't like what you discover. This woman has the lives of countless innocents in her hands. An ocean of blood and it was all for the sake of power. If anyone is obsessed with the Order and the tenets and Our way of life, its her. She'll kill thousands just to make sure our Order is kept secret." Raven Meridius was born through rituals of the Daughters of Coldharbour. She was yet in her mother's womb when her mother was given to the Daedric Lord, and had been tremendously changed. Verona, fearing her child may pass onto death, made a second pact with Molag Bal. That her child would grow healthy and strong and yet have the purity of vampiric blood adrift her veins. Molag Bal would see to this if the girl would pledge her unholy life to him for the centuries to come. Raven was born in Cyrodiil, the youngest child of Aluc Cardius, and Verona. She was raised in her family's old castle, situated somewhere along the Colovian Highlands. From an early age, Raven identified herself s something different from her brother. After the apparent death of her mother, she grew up recognizing the great and ancient power within herself and believed she deserved better, which led to her drilling herself to perfection before she would begin her plans for self-improvement. Intelligent and highly ambitious, Raven desired her father and brother to take on a more active role in the empire's politics, both to increase their own wealth and power, and to pave the way for a vampiric influenced government. She was dissapointed to learn, however, that her father was no longer a member of the Order Vampyrum due to past trangressions, and him and his offspring were excluded from clan affairs. This led to Raven's murderous plotting coming into place at an early age, believing that the Order Vampyrum were being led by blind, misguided vampires, a fact she would soon see manifest. As an adolescent, Raven studied in the Imperial University and also enrolled in the Arcane University. Her family's social status provided her with powerful high-profile connections, such as other nobles, aristocrats and even governmental officials of the Imperial Palace. Political Rise in the Empire "The Order stands as an invisible opposition. A myth. Where the vampire once brandishes fangs and claws, we now wear trappings of silk and burgundy linens."- ''Aluc Cardius to a young Raven. To be Written The Infiltration of the Thalmor in the Fourth Era. Personality. ''"She's quite the attractive woman...if you manage to go beyond the manipulative, power-hungry infant devourer." When a younger child, Raven was a small girl with straight black hair. As she matured by Bal's ritualistic power, she grew into an athletically built, strong woman of tall stature. She had long, lustrous black hair and eyes that were red as blood and yellow as liquid fire from her vampirism. She was often considered by those whom she came across as unnaturally beautiful, and she was fully conscious of her appearance. Because of the anonymity required by the Order, however, Raven carefully planned her life to make herself inconspicuous when necessary. Despite this, she often exploited full use of her appearance, taking advantage of her looks to support her when extracting information from other individuals. With time, Raven developed in cunning and manipulation, and Aluc Cardius became impressed with her deceitful and calculating nature. Nonetheless, Raven was considered no more than an heir to his legacy and one of the Order's saviors. While living in the Imperial City, Raven was often friendly to the mortals with whom she encountered. She also made use of bribes, as such attitudes would allow her to acquire most of the things she needed without drawing unwanted attention. During her early years, she displayed a hunger for knowledge and power, spending hours upon hours on her library in her father's castle. If she was not studying, she was learning aggressive styles of sword combat, and martial arts employed by her father, who learned them in his time as a human in Elsweyr. Though she drilled herself to perfection of the mind and body, she also learned to control her emotions. Before she was sent to society, Raven knew how vampires around Tamriel were vilified and considered "abominations" by the mortals. She believed, however, that vampires were not evil, and were beyond common morality as they were predators. Additionally to her mindset on that concept, she considered herself the embodiement of vampirism, as she carries the purity of her bloodline and that all mortals beneath her are either pawns or cattle for the slaughter. While rising to prominance in the 3E 153, Raven became increasingly treacherous, betraying and killing numerous people who placed their trust in her. Ever since her younger years in tutelage under he father's feet, Raven's main goal was nothing less than grasping power. In her personal goal and by vampiric nature, she afforded to be eternally patient, incredibly intelligent, and an oustanding actress, able to adopt a façade of a normal and trustworthy politician and young noblewoman for a stupendous number of years. Her lack of a true loving relationship with her father, and a life devoid of a maternal figure had shaped her into a cold and calculating vampire. As both politician and Court Mage, she appeared as an unpretentious, giggling young woman, almost sisterly, with elegant attires. With her heart-warming demeanor, symbolic smile, and a unblemished reputation for being a humble and modest woman, she captured the hearts of many people in Cyrodiil, thus concealing her true motives behind the perfect masquerade. Her actions as a loving woman and a kind noble served only to shadow her true persona, that of a vampire of the Order. Raven was a manipulative, deceitful and seductive megalomaniac, using people and subtely bending them to her whims and carrying out her desires. Raven had a particular obsession with purity and youth. Even though she was unable to age physically, she often chose to feed on newborn infants and children and virgins as well, believing a pureblooded vampire occasionally were better fed if their nutrition was pure. '' Swordmastery Despite her common appearance, Raven was incredibly skilled in fencing and sword combat, a truly talented duelist. A vampire swordmaster, she learned to use any type of one-handed sword to utilize in combat. A master of many techniques in combat and stances, Raven lured her opponents in, curbing her true capabilities, and then delivering a fatal blow when her foes imagined they had an advantage. When fighting at her fourth stage, the pureblooded Raven was a terrifying adversary. Raven had a superbly aggressive dueling style and augmented her abilities by using her vampirism, which allowed her to defeat experienced mortal warriors and even mages. Her unorthodox styles of dual wielding allowed her to defend herself against opponents with little effort, only moving into offensive attacks when her enemy was either weakened or too frustrated. Raven mastered her art of the sword a degree that her attacks became a matter of instinct, thus allowing her to use her vampiric abilities to further augment her honed skills. Vampire Powers and Blood Magic ''"What in oblivion could you possibly do to me?" "I can use my powers to conjure up your worst fears and your worst nightmares and bring them to life right before you. I can tap into your mind and seize it. I can drive you insane with fear, tear apart your sanity, or control your psyche and make you a thrall and leave you a shell of a person for the rest of your life." As a vampire of the Order, Raven mastered her natural affinity for Blood magic and became an accomplished sorceress. She studied the doctrines of the Order and perfected her abilities, both supernatural and mundane; seducing people with a touch and a stare, driving people into a fatal state of insanity and despair by displaying to them their greatest fears, or simply unleashing lightning and fire attacks. ■Vampire's Seduction: Raven can seduce her victims into a trance-like state and hypnotize them with her eyes. If their willpower is not strong enough, she can send them out to do her bidding by enthralling them. It can be noted she feeds on her victims by using this power whenever she diets from blood for two days. ■Reign of Terror: Aside from mundane use of illusion spell, Cyrodiilic vampires possessed the ability to form hallucinations within the minds of individuals by summoning their worst fears and silencing them, thus making them unable to use magic. Raven often used this when fighting against mages or necromancers, and her potent use of the power was able to drive a person near death, depending on the images she inflicted. A victim was able to survive if they had strength of will, though if not, the individual would descend into madness. Once Raven made her love claw her eyes out using this power in the Third Era. ■Embrace of Shadows: The vampiric power involved the manipulation of light and sound to render the caster invisible to the naked eye. Raven seldom used this, as she was well-fed on the constant basis, though times of chaos would pave the way for the use of this ability. Raven used Embrace of Shadows when escaping the carnage the Dark Brotherhood unleashed against the Crimson Scars, and when battling a group of necromancers.